Hi Nicolas -
I like your suggestion! I've always tried to document whose concepts I am using in a paper; but I think going forward I will be more explicit about it in the M&M, as you suggest.
Aloha, Rich
-----Original Message----- From: tdwg-content-bounces@lists.tdwg.org [mailto:tdwg-content-bounces@lists.tdwg.org] On Behalf Of Bailly, Nicolas (WorldFish) Sent: Sunday, October 17, 2010 4:23 PM To: tdwg-content@lists.tdwg.org; tdwg-bioblitz@googlegroups.com Subject: [tdwg-content] Dlarification of taxon concept uses in biologicalpapers (from Rich's statement)
Dear All,
Again I support Rich's analysis:
" Yes, exactly! The *SINGLE* most important thing we can do to reduce the taxonomic ambiguity in our databases is to get people in the habit of recording what field guide/monograph/key/whatever was used in making the determination of the specimen's taxonomic identity. Even if an expert pulled the identification out of his/her head, s/he should document the best published representation of the taxon concept that matches what the identifier (person, not GUID) had in mind when making the determination."
I would go even further.
As taxa are only hypotheses, their use must be clarified in Material and Methods in any publication (I mean in biology, ecology and others in general): a number of citations must be made:
- the one that establishes the circumscription used in the
publication.
- the one with identification key or diagnostic character
used to identify specimens or individuals in the work.
- the one that gives the phylogeny.
- the one that gives the classification (as far as we
recognized that the classification is a simplification of the phylogeny, but it is not the point of discussion here).
- and any other citations on topics, e.g., distribution, used
in the paper.
Hopefully, a taxonomic revision encompasses all of them, but when the last revision is old, then additional citations must be made.
In chemical papers for instance, there is always the description of methods, sometimes even including the brand of the chemicals ... so why not precising concepts in biological publications.
If these citations were done properly, there would be no problem to use impact factors as well for taxonomy, and databases today would be terrific. Doing the work back looks overwhelming but CLEMAM on European marine Mollusks is an example it is doable, although it does include few publications outside taxonomy.
I feel that the taxonomic community should have been more aggressive to journal editors and other colleagues to move that way, a role for systematics societies all around the world I suggest.
BW Nicolas.
-----Original Message----- From: tdwg-content-bounces@lists.tdwg.org [mailto:tdwg-content-bounces@lists.tdwg.org] On Behalf Of Richard Pyle Sent: Monday 18 October 2010 04:18 To: 'Peter DeVries' Cc: tdwg-content@lists.tdwg.org; tdwg-bioblitz@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: [tdwg-content] What is an Occurrence? [what about the "token"]
This was a bit of a "straw man" but I think what we would
both agree
that annotating the identification to the "concept" "as described by the key" would more accurately represent the assertion that was made. It is as if there is pressure to make documenting the identification process more "code compliant" than making it accurately reflect what happened.
Yes, exactly! The *SINGLE* most important thing we can do to reduce the taxonomic ambiguity in our databases is to get people in the habit of recording what field guide/monograph/key/whatever was used in making the determination of the specimen's taxonomic identity. Even if an expert pulled the identification out of his/her head, s/he should document the best published representation of the taxon concept that matches what the identifier (person, not GUID) had in mind when making the determination.
Jim Croft once told me that he tried to get his users to do this many years ago, but he simply couldn't persuade them to do this. (I think it was Jim who told me this.)
There's such a huge difference in informatic value between "This specimen is Aus bus", vs. "This specimen falls within the species concept of Aus bus as circumscribed by Jones, 1950". The latter sounds like a lot of extra work, but in fact, all you need is one field labelled "sec", or "in the sense of", with a drop-down list of publications that treated "Aus bus". For most field surveys & collections, you can probably find a single default reference that would apply in 90% of the cases, and then tag only the remaining 10% with a different reference, as needed.
The biggest problem I have with dwc:identificationReferences (http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/index.htm#identificationReferenc es), is that it allows many. What to do, then, if two listed references present two different concept circumscriptions (e.g., one sensu lato, and one sensu stricto)? Always fall to the strictest sense?
Personally, I think a "best practices" approach to this term would be "list only the best Reference, unless it's absolutely necessary to indicate more than one reference, from which a composite concept can be established".
In my experience with my bugs and and some of the mammals, the original descriptions and subsequent revisions are not as
informative
as some in the community portray them. They often do not
serve as good
guides as to what specimens are instances of that concept and what specimens are not.
....so what, then, are the guides following? Or are they presenting original taxonomy within the guide itself? If you can anchor the identification to the field guide, that's 90% of the battle right there. Later we can map the field guide to a mopnograph, or some other source for the full concept definition.
Also, that perhaps the Code should be revised to fit the biology, rather than trying to get the biology and related databases
to fit the
Code.
I don't follow. Can you give me an example of what you mean?
Are you saying that the Code(s) should make rules for defining taxon concepts, rather than just rules for establishing names? I hope not! But if so, then you might want to check out the Phylocode, which basically does exactly that (to the extent that a clade is also a form of defining a taxon cocnept).
Aloha, Rich
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